1. Award-winning children’s books (Click here to read more about those) 2. Loads of articles for People magazine about crime, music, celebrities, everyday heroes, and famous villains3. A newspaper column for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch which I wrote weekly and weakly until I was fired (Best thing that ever happened to me!*) 4. Boring press releases for the federal government (Also a good thing because it gave me time to think about other things) 5. Transcripts for a PBS affiliate in New Orleans (No original thinking required, but it taught me how to type really, reallyfast) 6. Thousands of letters to family and friends, which is probably why I write a lot of my books in an epistolary format

*As wise woman Lori Benton once told me, you’re nobody if you’ve never been fired. It was only after I got fired from my job as a newspaper columnist that I got serious about doing what I really wanted to do, which was to write books. So remember that if you ever get fired.

full disclosure

Drawing by a young artist named Leo in Texas

In the interest of full disclosure, here's a more accurate picture of what I really look like.